Bus Logic

by Erik Hare

This week, everything in Saint Paul changed.  People talked on the 74 bus in a way that they haven’t before, starting up conversations on with random strangers as we rumbled down Seventh Street and out Randolph.  Some of the people I’ve seen many times silently passing their own time turned their heads and said something to me about what’s going on in the world.

Was it the election?  That’s certainly a major pastime in the capitol city, and always has been.  But there’s been more to it lately than just one event.

The news is full of foreclosures and how we might deal with them as neighborhoods alongside reports of bailouts and protections built into the bigger system.  It’s also gotten colder out, finally sinking into the shivering cold of winter.  Mostly, however, I think we all got used to the idea of change, an event more powerful than any one politician or story in the news.

It doesn’t sound like much on the 74.  “These politicians, they’re gonna have to do something for the rest of us,” said one man I’ve silently seen many times.  Another offered a few profanities about what he actually expects is going to happen to us.  It wasn’t exactly hopeful, but at the same time there was hope.  We were all talking about it, regardless of race and class and all the other things that kept us in our seats by ourselves, focused straight ahead.  For once, it wasn’t just all about watching for the right stop.  We were enjoying the trip itself, all of us.

It’s not really that unusual to see people talking on the 74 bus.  Strangers have asked me a few things before, usually how to find their way to one place or another.  What’s new is that people are talking about how they really feel about things both in Saint Paul and the country as a whole. 

What does it mean?  To me, it’s just Saint Paul.  We’re a people that take care of ourselves as much as we can.  That means we express our opinions and have a sense of how everything comes together as a city.  We haven’t been as good at that in recent years as we slowly sunk into affluence.  Now, we’re worried.  More than worried, we’ve seen stuff in the general media that tells us we have a good reason to be worried about a number of things. 

In Saint Paul, worry means there’s work to do.  The first step is to start talking about what we need to do, and before that gets going we have to take some time to vent.  We might do that in community meetings or to a reporter, but some of it starts on the bus. I feel confident that we’re going to start getting our arms around some of the problems we have because, if nothing else, we’re talking. 

The 74 bus may not be the best place to gauge how the city is going, but I’ve seen all this during the last downturn in 1991.   It’s a good start.